The Selection

Chapter 28

This story/plot belongs to Kiera Cass

𒊹︎︎︎ᴥ︎︎︎𒊹︎︎︎

The wide doors of my balcony  were open, as well as the one to the hallway, and my room was filled with the warm, sweet air blowing in from the gardens. I had hoped the soft breezes would be a consolation for the fact that I had so much work to do. Instead they distracted me, making me ache to be anywhere but stuck at my desk.

I sighed and reclined in my seat, letting my head drape over the back of the chair. "Anne," I called.

"Yes, miss?" my head maid answered from the corner where she was sewing. Without looking, I knew that Mary and Lucy, my other two maids, had perked up, waiting to see if they could serve me as well.

"I command you to figure out what this report means," I said, pointing a lazy arm at the detailed account on military statistics that sat in front of me. It was a task that all the Elite would be tested on, but I couldn't bring myself to focus on it.

My three maids laughed, probably from both the ridiculousness of my demand and the fact that I'd issued one at all. I wouldn't have called leadership one of my strong suits.

"I'm sorry, my lady, but I think that might be overstepping my boundaries," Anne answered. Even though my request was a joke and her answer was, too, I could hear the genuine apology in her voice for not being able to help me.

"Fine." I moaned, heaving myself into an upright position. "I'll simply have to do it myself. The whole lot of you are worthless. I'm getting new maids tomorrow. This time I mean it."

They all chuckled again, and I focused on the numbers one more time. I was getting the impression that this was a bad report, but I couldn't be sure. I reread paragraphs and charts, furrowing my brow and biting the back of my pen as I tried to concentrate.

I heard Lucy laugh quietly, and I looked up to see what she was so amused by, following her eyes to the door. There, leaning against the frame, was Jungkook.

"You gave me away!" he complained to Lucy, who continued to snicker.

I pushed back my chair in a rush and ran into his arms. "You read my mind!"

"Did I?"

"Please tell me we can go outside. Just for a little while?"

He smiled. "I have twenty minutes before I have to be back."

I pulled him down the hall, the excited chatter of my maids fading behind us.

There was no denying the gardens had become our place. Almost every chance we got to be alone, we came out here. It was such a stark contrast to how I used to spend my time with Taehyung: holed up in the tiny tree house in my backyard, the only place we could be together safely.

Suddenly I wondered if Taehyung was around somewhere, indistinguishable from the nuY/nous guards in the palace, watching as Jungkook held my hand.

"What are these?" Jungkook asked, brushing across the tips of my fingers as we walked.

"Calluses. They're from pressing down on violin strings four hours a day."

"I've never noticed them before."

"Do they bother you?" I was the lowest caste of the six girls left, and I doubted any of them had hands like mine.

Jungkook stopped moving and lifted my fingers to his lips, kissing the tiny, worn tips.

"On the contrary. I find them rather beautiful." I felt myself blush. "I've seen the world—admittedly mostly through bulletproof glass or from the tower of some ancient castle—but I've seen it. And I have access to the answers of a thousand questions at my disposal. But this small hand here?" He looked deeply into my eyes. "This hand makes sounds incomparable to anything I've ever heard. Sometimes I think I only dreamed that I heard you play the violin, it was so beautiful. These calluses are proof that it was real."